Muhammad: Birth to Ministry
[35] See the references in n. 33, above. Ibn Hisham and Tabari show that
all of Muhammad's sons died before his call.
[36] Buhl, Muhammeds, p. 121.
[37] Nöldeke and Schwally, GQ, vol. 1, pp. 15 f; Buhl, Muhammeds,
p. 120; SEI, p. 392; Guillaume, Islam, p. 57.
[38] Andrae, Mohammed, p. 42, reiterates that in Islamic traditions there
is no further information regarding other trading journeys of Muhammad or
Khadija, and that the trade vocabulary found in the Qur'an is related to
religious terminology.
[39] The Qur'anic regulation of business transactions in 2:282 is very
revealing on this point. Each party is to agree on a scribe who is to write the
transaction, if one is unable to dictate, then his representative (waliy) is to
do this for him. Moreover, every transaction is to be witnessed by the
equivalent of two male witnesses (i.e. two females for one male). Such a
regulation, which may have been relatively standard anyway for that time,
only requires that the scribe (who is to write as God has taught him) be
literate.
[40] Guillaume, Muhammad, pp. 84 f; Ibn Sad, Classes, vol. 1, 1, pp. 164 f; Tabari, History, vol. 6, pp. 51 f. A strange hadith in Guillaume, New Light, p. 24, places this event much earlier, and depicts
Abdu ́l-Muttalib as
the one who put the black stone in place.
[41] Guillaume, Muhammad, p. 86; Tabari, History, vol. 6, p. 58; Ibn
Sa`d, Classes, vol. 1, 1, 166 (gives the gate of the Banu Shayba).
[42] See Buhl, Muhammeds, p. 122. Cf. Sahih Bukhari, vol. 5, p. 109, in
which it is reported that the wall around the Kaba was first built during the reign of
Umar.